Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [60]
Some people have trouble doing this because they’ve been taught that it’s wrong to feel sorry for yourself. So who else should you feel sorry for? Stay in sympathy with yourself: you feel bad, so be kind to yourself.
You can talk to a friend, or your other lover, presuming you have made agreements about confidentiality with everybody who might care if you gossip. Janet has a deal with a good friend of hers for telephone support. She can call her friend up and ask for five minutes of “poor baby,” and if her friend is available, she pours out her feelings and her friend says, you guessed it, nothing but “poor baby” till she is through. This dialogue may sound silly, but don’t knock it till you try it. Comfort is a good thing in hard times.
EXERCISE Reassurance
Here’s an exercise you can do with your partner to learn how to “poor baby” each other even when times are hard.
Make a list of ten things your partner could do that would reassure you.
Avoid abstractions—focus on behaviors, not emotions. “Love me more” is an emotion and thus pretty hard to act on: how will you know that your partner loves more? “Bring me a rose” is a behavior that anybody with a dollar can perform. Write your list in private, your partner can do the same, and then you can get together and look at each other’s lists. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to be reassuring when you have a list.
This assignment may be more complicated than it sounds. Many questions may come up in your mind: How could I ask for that? Shouldn’t my partner already know? If I have to ask for it, does it really count? If my partner loved me, wouldn’t this be happening already?
If you’re having thoughts like these, imagine what it might feel like to be asked for reassurance by your partner. Wouldn’t it feel good to know how you could help? We can’t read each other’s minds, but we do care, and we can help once we know how.
WHO’S TO BLAME?
As you get skilled at finding and expressing your feelings, you can try a more challenging task: see if you can write about or talk to your friend about your feelings without blaming anybody. Not your lover, not your lover’s lover, and especially not yourself. This exercise is not easy: you will be surprised how readily we all slip into that blaming mode, but it is very, very worthwhile to learn to have your feelings without foisting them on someone else.
It also helps to pay attention to how we attribute intention. “You’re just doing this because you want to make me mad”: how often do you suppose that’s actually true? We just about never make anybody mad on purpose; the results are usually unpleasant. It’s easy to invent other people’s intentions for them in order to try to make sense of what you’re feeling … but it can be very hard for them to speak their truth if someone’s accusing them of intentions they never had.
Only when we’re all willing to own our emotions, and let our lovers and friends own theirs, does anyone have the power to change and grow.
BABY YOURSELF
When your emotions are overwhelming and chaotic, it can help to ask yourself if there is anything you could do that would help you feel just one tiny bit safer. Let go of the big picture: maybe it’s too big to figure the whole thing out right now. A few deep breaths, conscious relaxation of some muscles, soothing music. Try wrapping yourself in a soft blanket. It may not seem like much, but once you manage to do anything that improves your lot even the littlest bit, you are moving in the right direction to build some confidence that you can learn to deal with your jealous feelings.
Give yourself permission to take good care of yourself while you learn to work through jealousy and other hard feelings. Learn to nurture yourself. What are